


girl and the sea

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Gen, huh I really don't want to spoil this actually, look it's your typical drama angst rigamarole but I think that's all I'm gonna give you, with apologies to the English and also to various Welsh resort towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18830842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: There's a crack in Jane Smith's wall.





	1. i.

\---

Here are the things that Jane Smith knows: the sea beyond the village is very wide, and above it the sky stretches out for miles; her world is very small, but it’s full of tiny wonders to match it, when she cares to look; her past is behind her, a fog that she can’t penetrate, no matter how hard she tries, and she has no age, no history, nothing that ties her to anything else -

(Well. Nothing that she can remember, anyway.)

\- but she has enough to tie her to herself; she has hands that know how to fix almost anything; she abhors the taste of pears but delights in almost all others; delight, in fact, comes to her easy, like breath on wind, like the sea to the shore; and she has no memory, nothing immaterial, but plenty of the material - photographs and albums and books and clothes that don’t belong to her, _can’t_ belong to her, and a great empty house -

And a crack in the wall of her great, empty bedroom.

No one else ever seems to think that this is particularly odd, and so maybe it isn’t.

\---

“Ryan Sinclair,” she says fondly, when he drags his battered bike to her backyard shed for what must be the third time in the past few weeks, revelling in the new dents, in what can only be the dramatic antagonism of aerodynamic metal having met very old wood, “did you throw it into a tree again?”

He coughs once, uncomfortably, which means yes. She grins, hefting it onto her work table with relish.

“Might have done,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck casually. “Weren’t getting along with it this week.”

“So you chucked it into the woods again,” she marvels, crouching to get a better eye for the damage. “ _Brilliant_. You’re not half my favourite, you know.”

“You’re not half the weirdest person I know,” he says, but his voice isn’t as sharp as some she’s heard when he says it. Possibly that means they’re friends, but she’s never felt quite brave enough to ask. “Gramps was proper livid.”

“Ah,” she scoffs, straightening, “this is nothin’. Easy fix. Come by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have her good as new.”

“Really?” He shakes his head, but again, it’s lacking in sharpness. She watches carefully, and his eyes are warm and his mouth is curving upward. “You’re brilliant, you are. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Keep the local bike shop in business,” she suggests, grinning, head already absently spinning with ideas of how best she’s going to get those dents out. And maybe improve the shocks while she’s at it, for that matter -

“You really are the best, though,” he says, before she can get too carried away. “You know I’d pay you, if you’d let me.”

“Absolutely not,” she protests. “You keep me in wonderful business, I won’t have your money.”

“Right, but,” and he’s looking at her a bit carefully now, like the rest of them do, and she can never quite figure out the how and why of it, can never quite pinpoint where exactly she got it wrong, “‘s not really a business if you don’t make any money from it, yeah?”

Which - right. She feels her nose wrinkle as she considers the logic of it. It’s not an unfair point.

“Keeps my hands busy, though,” she counters, “and that’s worth all the money in the world. You keep chucking your bike into innocent trees, I keep from melting into a puddle of boredom, and the world keeps on turnin’.”

He smiles at that, and the world rights itself a bit. He shoves his hands into his pockets, still smiling, which means he’s about to leave.

“Well, I ain’t complaining,” he says. “Thanks, Jane. Really.”

“You’ll get that bike, Ryan,” she says, ducking down again to fiddle with some of the screws on the handlebar. “It’s bound to happen one day, it’s just physics.”

“Oh, well, when you put it like that.” She hears the creak of his footsteps on the cragged wood floor of her workshop as he turns to leave. “Really, though. Thanks.”

She grins, where he can’t see.

“I’ll keep fixing it until you do,” she says, quietly. But, before his footsteps disappear entirely: “Ryan? On the subject of payment.”

He pauses.

“Yeah?”

“If you brought round a box of custard creams with you tomorrow afternoon, I wouldn’t say no.”

\---

Here are the things that Jane Smith knows: she is afraid of the dark and what’s under the bed; she can’t remember her age or her parents or her life and sometimes it aches like an abscess in the pit of her chest; she can’t ever seem to get anything quite  _right_ , and that aches, too; and late at night, in the crawling, screaming dark, as the sea roars calm through the salt-soaked walls of her great, empty house, she dreams of things that are unspeakable.

\---

In the bleak summer daylight, though, her dreams get washed away.

It’s always summer here, and no one seems to find that particularly odd either, and so maybe it isn’t.

“ _Oh_ ,” she winces, as the ice cream she’s just scooped slides off the scoop underneath it, achingly slow and yet somehow too quickly to catch. It splatters the ground and sends specks of mint choc green to land brightly on PC Khan’s meticulously polished shoes. “Sorry.”

“ _Jane_ ,” she hears behind her, and her shoulders tense, but in front of her PC Khan is waving it off, half laughing.

“Sorry,” she hisses behind her, catching a glimpse of her manager’s flaming hair and customer service face, almost always caught in a polite rictus of smothered ire. Usually aimed in her direction, if she’s honest, but to be fair, she’s much better at fixing banged-up bikes than she is at scooping ice cream. “I’ll scoop you a new one,” she says to PC Khan, diving in to the mint choc again. This scoop is more successful than the last, and she jams a Flake bar in it for good measure. “On the house,” she beams, handing it carefully over.

PC Khan takes it, bemused, her face still caught in a half smile.

“Thanks,” she says. “Jane, right?”

“The one and only.” She assumes, at least. She’s bad with names. Bad enough she sometimes gets the feeling even her own would slip out of her head if it weren’t constantly yelled in her general direction. PC Khan is familiar, though, if only because she’s a creature of habit who wears a nametag and tends to order the exact same thing at the exact same time on the exact same day with relative frequency.

The concept is a bit beyond Jane, to be honest. If she had her way she’d never do anything the same way twice, go anywhere at the same time twice, eat anything the same way more than once, with the possible exception of custard creams, because they are the world’s greatest biscuit and should be treated as such. Consistency grates on her like nails on a blackboard.

But a familiar face is nice enough, she supposes. Especially when it’s not one that’s cross with her.

“I won’t spill any on you next time,” she promises, resting her elbows on the glass.

“You spilt some on me last time too,” PC Khan points out, quietly enough that Ms. Temple won’t overhear, and her mouth is doing the half smile, and so probably that means she’s still not cross. “I keep comin’ back, don’t I?”

“At your peril.”

“Maybe I like a bit of risk.”

But there’s shouting that starts off in the distance, voices carrying from the end of the prom, over the rush of the sea, and PC Khan sighs, mouth flattening.

“Oh, not again,” she mutters. “Can’t they ever find somethin’ new to argue about?” She glances down at her ice cream mournfully, but flashes a smile up at Jane. “Thanks anyway.”

“Sorry about your shoes,” Jane says, and reaches to pass her a napkin, which she takes gratefully.

“Worth the risk,” PC Khan says over her shoulder as she leaves, still smiling. Jane watches her go, elbows still propped up on the glass, cool against her skin.

A cleared throat, behind her.

She turns, sheepish, and Ms. Temple hands her a mop with a glare. She tilts her head in the direction of the spill on the pavement.

“Right,” Jane says, taking it. “Right.”

\---

The local pub - the only pub, and it has a name, probably, but she can never remember it - is always busy in the evenings, jammed full of people she knows she should know, loud and probably cozy, if she could stand it. But she tends to haunt the dimmest, quietest corner, trapped by some inexplicable combination of social obligation and -

Well. Her house is very big, and very empty. Ryan’s bike is repaired, all the dents hammered out this morning when she woke, and she’s bereft of other things to fix. If she goes home she’ll only sit for hours with all the lights on, heart hammering in her throat, fingers itching for something to do.

This is not pleasant, but it’s not - nothing. It’s just what she does. It’s just what they all do.

A calloused hand slides a glass her way. She glances up, a prepared scowl sitting on her face, ill-fit.

“Jack,” she protests.

“It’s juice in a bourbon glass,” he says dryly from over the bar counter, accent grating, familiar and not. “I do know you, Jane. I’m just trying to preserve your image.”

“It doesn’t need preservin’.”

“Oh, it does. Believe me.” He turns a suggestive eye to someone beyond her left shoulder, grinning. “I could help you out, you know,” he says, through his teeth. “I know all sorts of ladies and gents.”

She sips her juice and doesn’t reply, as per the script.

“Not really my area,” she mutters, after a moment. The juice is cold and sweet and the press of the walls and the people around them is loud and warm and the sea beyond the window rushes and crashes against the shore. No one ever really speaks to her except for Jack, here, and she thinks probably that’s the way she likes it.

Probably.

“Isn’t it?” Jack asks, swiping a grimy rag over the condensation left from her glass. “You’ve got a big heart, Jane. Might as well share it with someone.”

“Actually, I’ve got two,” she corrects absently, without thinking about it too much. But that’s not quite right, is it, actually, and he’s looking at her carefully, rag trapped between his fingers and she’s -

She swallows the last of her juice and averts her gaze. The wall behind the bar is old wood, polished, shelves bolted in, a captain’s hat hung on one edge, piled high with glasses and bottles of all sorts of things that probably taste the opposite of how they look, all shiny and jewelled and delicate and -

She breathes in.

“There’s a crack in your wall,” she says.

Jack turns.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It’s always been there.”

Jane’s fingertips whiten against the glass. Behind her, beyond her, the sea rails against the shore.

“Has it?” she asks.

\---

That night she dreams of metal and glass and glinting walls, cold at her back, gleaming in front of her. Sharp, wrong, trapped, but there’s a whole universe exploding behind her eyes, like a refuge. Something to hold to, something to reach for. Something greater than the screaming dark.

Something more than the endless sea.

The crack taunts her when her eyes flick open. The sky out her window is only dark and empty. She stumbles out into her back garden anyway, plants herself down on the giant rock by the path, shivering in her nightshirt. Her head tilts up to look at the lonely moon. She’s missing something.

She’s missing something.

\---

“Jane,” Dr. Jones says, her notebook balanced on her lap where she’s perched on Jane’s sofa. A cup of tea is cooling on the table beside her. No sugar, because Dr. Jones, for reasons inexplicable, claims to avoid it entirely. “Have you been sleeping?”

Jane takes a careful sip - not a slurp, because that’s impolite, apparently - of her own tea. All seven sugars of it, the way tea is meant to be. She sets her mug down, also carefully, and watches Dr. Jones’ eyebrows raise at the _World’s Greatest Dad_ splashed across the side in faded print.

“Yeah, I suppose.” Her gaze wanders to the open windows, the ragged, gauzy curtains. Salt air from outside catches under nose, and her fingers twitch. Behind her eyes, she can feel something itching. “Do you - ”

Her fingers catch in the fabric of her jumper, in the unravelling threads at the bottom. She can’t remember when Dr. Jones arrived. Or why she’s here, for that matter.

 _When did you get here?_ She wants to ask, but it’s the sort of question that will garner an odd look, probably. Time itself moves oddly in this place, but it never seems to bother anyone else.

Dr. Jones looks at her kindly, carefully. Jane peels her own gaze from the window with effort. Being rude to Dr. Jones, even accidentally, always makes her feel a bit ill. She can’t remember how they met, can’t remember how they even know each other, can’t remember why she comes to visit - but when she looks at that face, into those dark, kind eyes, she’s always beset by the thought that she’s somehow wronged her. That Dr. Jones deserves more than she can give. That she deserved more than what she got.

“Would you like a biscuit?” she asks, a bit fruitlessly. It doesn’t help with the guilt.

“I’ve come to ask you about the stars, Jane,” Dr. Jones says, shaking her head slightly. “Remember?”

She feels her nose wrinkle. The stars. Right. It’s a trick question, though, and she knows how to answer.

“Stars? What stars?”

Dr. Jones raises an eyebrow and waits.

Jane sighs.

“The ones in your journal,” Dr. Jones prompts. “Would you like to talk about them?”

“No one else ever does,” she mutters, hunching into her jumper, suddenly chilled. Her journal lies open on the table before them, and she can’t remember when she put it there. But it’s her writing, her stars scribbled in the margins. Filling empty space. “I know they’re not there, I just - ”

“Just what, Jane?” Dr. Jones leans forward, brow crinkled. Compassionate, but it’s on the edge of pity, and it makes her skin prickle. But Dr. Jones is only trying to help. Dr. Jones is only kind. Dr. Jones deserves better, she deserves more than Jane can give, more than what Jane gave -

“Well, shouldn’t they be?” she demands, unable to help herself, dragged into an argument that feels as old as dust. “The sun is a star. It’s - hydrogen, helium, oxygen, iron, neon, fusing together, four million tons of matter into energy every second, it can’t be the only one, that doesn’t make any sense, it doesn’t - ”

She flattens her lips over the rest of the words. She knows how this ends. It’s not an argument she’s ever won.

“Jane,” Dr. Jones says, and her eyes say that Jane is a lost cause, an outsider, something pitiable, something that doesn’t fit, won’t ever fit -

“There’s no such thing as stars,” she interjects, because that’s always what comes next. “I know. I know, I remember. Just - ”

Dr. Jones closes her notebook gently and stands.

“I’ll be round again soon,” and her voice is kind and soft, but it feels not unlike a threat.

Jane stays where she is, fingers tangled in the threads of her jumper, throat uncomfortably tight.

“Right,” she says, watching her leave. “Right.”

\---

“PC Khan, don’t you ever get tired of mint chocolate chip?”

‘Call me Yaz,” PC Khan says, grinning at her over the glass. “You’ve spilled enough ice cream on me that I think we’re probably friends by now.”

“Is that how friendship works?” Jane ponders, but she grins back, delighted. “I should have spilled ice cream on you ages ago.”

“You’re asking the wrong person, anyway,” PC Khan - no, wait,  _Yaz,_ says, and her grin wilts a bit. “Don’t have many friends round here.” The grin melts away into a frown of concern. “Is mint choc too borin’?” She blinks. “Maybe that’s why I’ve got no friends.”

“ _No_ ,” Jane protests, dismayed. Wrong, again, and her heart hammers at her throat at the thought of messing up - well, whatever this is. “No, mint choc is a staple. It’s a classic. Can’t go wrong with mint choc, it’s a superior ice cream flavour, I only meant - ”

Yaz is quick to smile again, at her bumbling reassurance. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try something new for once.”  She glances down at the green slowly melting down the cone in her hand. The Flake bar Jane had stabbed in as an extra is slowly lurching towards the ground. “I’ll just have to come back.”

Jane feels a grin tug at her mouth as she plants her elbows on the glass in a familiar motion, watching her leave. Her police vest catches neon and reflective in the sun as she makes her way down the prom, patrolling. It must be terribly warm, but she never complains. Maybe that’s what the ice cream’s for.

“ _Jane_ ,” she hears, hissed in her ear, and she jolts off the glass, straightening. Ms. Temple has her arms crossed behind her, and her face is half bemused, half irritated.

“What?” she asks, waiting. She resists valiantly the urge to preemptively flinch.

Ms. Temple shakes her head, relaxing. “I was going to tell you to stop giving people Flake bars at no additional cost,” she says, considering. “But, to be fair, she is a repeat customer.”

“Ah - ”

“ _Ah_.” Ms. Temple stares her down, arms still crossed, lips pursed. “You could do with a friend,” she says eventually. “Or someone. Just - someone.”

Jane only stands there, jaw hanging open in trepidation. This might be, she considers blankly, the first thing Ms. Temple has ever said to her that isn’t a dig at either her frame or her work ethic.

“I don’t - ” she starts, but she’s not entirely sure what to say next.

“Oh, go on, then.” Ms. Temple tilts her head in the direction of the prom, towards the sea. “Off you pop.”

“Off to - ”

The momentary goodwill evaporates.

“ _Take your break_ ,” she hisses, incredulous, hair catching like flames in the sun. “Honestly, you’ve got the mind of a brick and the body of a toothpick, get  _going_ , sunshine! Before she gets too far away to catch up.”

Jane shrugs out of her apron, confused, and places it into Ms. Temple’s waiting hands.

“Fifteen minutes,” she hears as she ducks out of the shack, salt air and endless summer wafting under her nose. “Or I’ll give all your shifts to Polly!”

\---

From then on, that’s how she takes all her afternoon breaks. Meandering down the prom with Yaz, counting seagulls, standing around awkwardly waiting when she has to deal with miscreants and the occasional misdemeanour. She introduces Yaz to the wonders of eating more than one ice cream flavour at a time, and Yaz teaches her how to properly arrest someone, and -

Well, it’s probably a bit like having a friend, isn’t it.

She doesn’t talk about the stars or the crack in her wall, and if Yaz notices when people occasionally cross the street to avoid her, she’s kind enough not to say anything. Yaz doesn’t say much at all, actually, about the sorts of things people usually like to talk to her about, and that fact alone makes her endlessly interesting. Instead, she asks endless questions, about the landscape, about the architecture, about the things that Jane repairs, about the sun hanging in the sky -

\- and that veers terribly close to the stars that aren’t there and should be, far too close to the lonely moon and the crack in her wall and the endless summer and the jolt and press of time, but Jane skids around the subject, clamps her teeth around it -

\- and she’s so terribly bright, and so terribly interested, and so terribly interesting. She has thoughts of her own, pieces of wit, clever observations, a streak of kindness that runs as deep as her whole person. She’s _brilliant_.

If she knew, Jane thinks sometimes, planted on her garden rock in the middle of the night, darkness stretching beyond her, she wouldn’t stay. If she knew about Dr. Jones and the stars and Jane’s big empty house and her big empty head, she wouldn’t stay.

But their friendship is rooted in sun and sand and ice cream and fifteen minute walks along the shore, and as long as it stays there, maybe Jane can keep it all skidding along until -

Well. Until something. Summer’s got to end eventually, she thinks, but it’s a thought that grows muddier and harder to reach every time she thinks it.

Maybe this is all there is. Just a girl and the sea and the sun and no stars.

It would be much easier, if that were true.


	2. ii.

If there’s a line between truth and fiction, Jane hasn’t found it yet. Lies fall from her tongue with relative ease, actually, but some things - like the stars - that everyone says are lies sit more like the truth at the back of her head.

In her dreams, they seem so  _real_.

But she can’t find them in any science books, can’t find them in the sky, can’t find a person out there in the whole town that’s ever seen them. They exist like myths do, ancient and mysterious and maybe. A fairy tale that she can’t shake.

And as for the crack in her wall -

Well. It doesn’t say much, though she sometimes feels as though it ought to.

“I closed you,” she whispers to it, one night. Nose pressed to the wall, cool plaster against her cheek. Unsure of where the words are coming from, but certain that they’re not a lie. “I closed you, how can you be here?”

But there are no voices beyond it, tonight, no spectacle of light and sound and colour. No time and space seeping through, and probably that’s perfectly normal but she can’t help but glare at it, disappointed.

“If you’re going to be a bit odd,” she says, standing, hands on her hips, “you might as well be _interesting_.”

The crack remains mutinously silent.

“Fine.” She drops her hands and resigns herself to the back garden for the rest of the night, where at least there are sometimes slugs to poke at. Ryan hasn’t chucked his bike into the local flora for days, and she’s out of things to fiddle with. Out of things to stay awake for, but sleep only brings things that are too wonderful or too terrible to think about, these days.

“I’ll just have to be interesting enough for the both of us.”

\---

There’s a crack in the glass of the ice cream.

It would almost be easy not to notice, just a hairline fracture, so thin it’s almost nothing, but it catches her eye in the glint of the sun.

“ _Excuse me_. I said I’d like a scoop of liquorice.”

She looks up, startled.

“ _Liquorice_?” she demands before she can stop herself, lip curling in disgust, because that’s the worst flavour she can think of, worse than pear, even. No one ever asks for  _liquorice_. Which is a horribly rude thing to imply to a customer, actually, but she’s slow today. It’s unbearably hot and there are flies about and the buzzing makes her heart race and her thoughts run like syrup.

“Sorry,” she says, gazing across at a woman that doesn’t fit. Her lips are thin and her eyes are as sharp and blue as the sea. “Can I - ”

“Oh, look at you,” the woman breathes, and there’s a bony hand that snakes up to grab at her chin, to tilt her head this way and that, and Ms. Temple is nowhere to be found, and no has ever  _reached across the glass before_ -

“ _Ah_ \- ” Jane protests, but the other woman’s hands are delicate but strong.

“There’s really nothing there, is there?” The woman tuts, and the curve of her mouth is sharp as well. She lets go of Jane’s chin. “I thought I’d pop in for a chuckle, but really, this is just sad.”

Her breath catches. “What - ”

The stranger shakes her head and starts to laugh.

“Oh, but really, look at you,” she gasps out, cackling. “The ice cream and the apron, oh, I can’t, _it’s too good_ \- ”

“Who are you?” Jane demands, but that only sets her off again, and her laugh is a grating bark, nails against a blackboard. _Irritating_ , and she can’t remember ever being truly irritated before. “Stop it.”

“ _Stop it_ ,” she taunts, still wheezing with laughter. “Oh, I’m furious I didn’t think this up myself, you’re so deliciously pathetic. I’m only visiting, see.” She sniffs the air and glances up. “In fact, I’d better not linger. They hate you, but they hate me more. Oh, dear.” Her freezing gaze fixes on Jane’s face again, and the curve of her cheek, the sharp angles of her mouth, they’re almost - _almost_ \- familiar. “Oh, come on,” she drawls. “You know who I am. You know where you are.” Her eyes flick down to the crack in the glass. “You’ve even engineered yourself a way out, which you’d know, if you weren’t so busy being stupid.”

The sharp smile vanishes.

“Poor, crazy Jane,” the woman whispers, leaning in over the glass. “Do you know what I think?” Something sly and horrible creeps across her face. “I think hell suits you.” She winks. “Enjoy the ice cream.”

“The matrix,” Jane breathes, but the word falls out of her mouth without any recognition. “Oh, of course, this is the - ”

But the thought slips through her fingers like sand, and the stranger is turning to leave.

“Wait,” she whispers. “Wait! Come back! M - ”

The right name won’t leave her mouth.

“Come back!” she shouts, leaning over the glass, but the stranger - stranger? - is a black speck amongst golden sand and rock, amongst tourists and their dogs, and she disappears far too quickly. Jane slumps against the glass, defeated, and the sun is glaring into her eyes and the inside of her head feels like it’s been scraped out with a spoon.

“ _Jane_.”

And Ms. Temple is back.

Ms. Temple’s hand - she knows it’s Ms. Temple’s hand, of course it is, _what else could it be_ \- reaches for her back but there are flies buzzing in her ears and the sun is hot on her face and she can’t help the flinch. Can’t help the way her breath catches as she peels herself off the glass reluctantly and turns.

“Don’t _shout_ at the customers,” Ms. Temple says incredulously, and there is something on her back, like there always is, but she never seems to notice, and so maybe it’s only perfectly ordinary -

“That’s my job, and only when they’re being terrible.” Her eyes narrow. “Who was that? Did they say something?”

“No,” Jane croaks.

“Well, don’t have a go at them, then. Honestly,” she mutters. Her eyes have got that look in them that Jane has never been able to decipher well, that look that they all get sometimes. Like they’re annoyed with her and sorry for her in the same breath. Like she’s done something wrong just by sort of - _being_ , and they can’t really fault her for it, but they can’t really condone it either.

Yaz never looks at her like that. But she would, probably. If she knew. If she was watching this, now, and there’s a small mercy, probably, if she can stand to look for it.

“Sorry,” Jane says quietly. There’s a fly to her left, and the buzzing is louder than anything she’s ever heard. All sorts of other words slip through her fingers, with the sand. She should be able to think her way out of this, probably. It’s only summer flies, and only a very odd woman, and only something that’s gone terribly wrong, clearly, but her head is full of sand and empty sea and buzzing sounds and she can’t -

“Are you having a funny turn?” Ms. Temple asks.

“No,” she insists.

Ms. Temple sighs, and she sounds very tired. “You’ve covered your eyes, Jane.”

Ah. Well, that explains the sudden darkness. “Right,” she says after a moment, and her knees have gone a bit jelly-like too, actually. The buzzing is loud in her ears, and she smells wet dirt, and it is _not_ , she thinks, definitely _not_ the smell of her own grave, because she’s in the middle of an ice cream shack and that would be ridiculous. She presses her back to the wall and sinks down, cold fingers clamped over her eyes. She breathes in, shallow. “Only there’s something on your back.”

A gust of air as Ms. Temple crouches, and she pries Jane’s fingers from her face with a rough sort of gentleness that no one else would be capable of. “No, there’s not,” she says softly. “Of course there’s not.”

“There _is_ ,” she says forcefully, and she can see it in the corner of her eye, as she meets Ms. Temple’s gaze. She doesn’t look her in the face very often, actually, and if anyone asked she would say it was because she was afraid of her, but really -

“I’ve done something terrible,” she blurts out in a whisper, and it tastes like truth in the back of her mouth. “To you, I’ve done something - ”

“No, you haven’t.” Ms. Temple shakes her head, and Jane’s hand is still clutched in her own, carefully. “Of course you haven’t. Jane - ”

“I _have_. Just because you can’t remember something,” she whispers, “doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“Jane.” Ms. Temple rubs her thumb over Jane’s fingers, and it’s probably like something a mother would do, but Jane has no point of reference. She smiles, and it’s very kind, and very sad. Probably. “Go home, love.”

\---

Jane goes home.

\---

On her way up the hill at the end of the shore, clouds begin to roll in and the blinding sun turns to rain, and the sea wails in protest, rails against the pebbled shore and against the cliffs of her hill. She ducks her head against the wind and the rain as it pelts against her cheeks and the thin fabric of her t-shirt and stumbles her way up the narrow path, fumbles her way in through the back like she always does with slick, freezing fingers. She drops her key in the hall and trips out of her trainers, feet soaking wet. The weather turns on a hair, here. It’s not surprising. It’s perfectly ordinary. All of this is perfectly ordinary, nothing here in this place is odd except _her_ -

Her knees give out near the sofa, so she plants herself there, fingers white-knuckled in the faded fabric. She should turn on a light. Turn on the radiator. Turn on the kettle, before the power goes, like it always does in storms like these. And the rain is a storm now, broiling above the town, tearing at the sea, pounding at her windows. Lightning flashes, and for a moment a familiar crack is written in light behind her eyelids. Thunder follows, in the distance.

Inside her big, empty house it’s only still and grey and silent.

Her breath crackles and spits in her throat. Her hands are very cold. On the mantle of the fireplace, there’s a photo of her parents visiting America, and their faces are so young and her mother’s vibrant hair is caught in the wind and the both of them are trapped in a moment, happy. Untouchable.

Even if she could remember them, she wouldn’t be able to reach them. That’s a sort of truth, too, at the back of her throat.

She leans forward to put her head in her hands and waits for the storm to pass.


	3. iii.

**iii.**

The back door creaks open and scrapes across her old wood floors. When she blinks, it’s to watery afternoon light caught in the gauzy curtains of her sitting room, and there are warm hands clutching her own.

“Jane,” Yaz says, caught in gauzy light, like a dream. But her hands are real and warm and her eyes are dark and the yellow of her police vest is glinting in the daylight. “Jane, are you - ”

Jane digs herself out of her head, with difficulty. The light stings her eyes. Yaz’s hands on her own are dry and warm and calloused. The tangibleness of it all is so sharp it almost hurts.

“Yaz.” Her voice is a rasp. She clears her throat. “Did you - ” She frowns. “Did you _break into my house_?”

Yaz withdraws her hands, looking sheepish. Jane’s fingers twitch.

“You, um. You left it unlocked.” Her expression grows more serious. “Which is really dangerous, you know, someone might - ”

She trails off.

“Break in?” Jane suggests. Her hands curl absently into fists in her lap, to keep from pulling at the threads of her jumper.

Yaz looks down for a moment, almost guiltily, but she steels herself and straightens, from her crouch on the floor. “I’m police,” she says, firmly. “I’m doin’ a - a wellness check. Patrolling. Just - neighbourhood safety, all that.”

“You patrol down by the beach, though,” Jane points out, and her head still feels cottony. Like her thoughts are filtering through her sitting room curtains. Seeing PC Khan - no, Yaz, _Yaz_ \- out of place feels wrong, somehow. Like someone’s switched the corner pieces of her jigsaw puzzle. “And how did - how did you know I live here?”

“You - ” Yaz blinks, flustered. “Sorry, it’s just - well, everyone knows you live up on the hill, actually, I just - ” She swallows, looking uncomfortable for the first time since Jane has known her, and there’s a stone, now, sinking into the pit of Jane’s stomach. If Yaz knows where she lives, because everyone knows where she lives, then it stands to reason that Yaz must also know all the rest of it, too. The stories and the gossip and the whispers and of course she knows, how could she not? She’s as much a part of the town as everyone else, and everyone else always has plenty to say about crazy Jane at the top of the hill, always looking up for the stars that aren’t there. This is pity, then. It must be.

How silly, to have hoped otherwise.

“You weren’t there yesterday,” Yaz says, blundering forward, looking strangely nervous, still. And there’s no pity in her gaze, yet, but Jane is waiting, now. Watching. “Or this morning. I just - ” She glances down, avoiding Jane’s eyes. “I was just worried, is all. Which was silly, because you’re - ”

But she looks up again, taking in Jane’s bedraggled hair. A hand reaches for the sleeve of her jumper, and it’s still slightly damp. She stills.

“Were you here all night?” she asks. There’s an edge to her voice that Jane can’t decipher, and there’s no way to answer the question that won’t make her sound like a lunatic.

“Suppose so,” she says, shame bubbling traitorously up her throat. _It was nice while it lasted_. “Sorry.” She moves as if to stand. “Should probably - phone down the shop, I’ll just - ”

“Jane,” Yaz says, dropping her sleeve. “Jane, are you - ”

Jane watches. She waits.

“Are you alright?” Yaz asks, and there’s no pity and no fear. Just concern. Probably.

“Yeah,” she lies. “Yeah, of course. Just - sick day. Went home. Would you like some tea?” she offers uselessly. But that’s what you do for guests, you offer them tea, that’s - a rule. Probably. Her breath feels tight in her throat again.

“I’ll get it,” Yaz says, pausing only for a moment before she shrugs her vest off. “You sit.”

Something in her voice is authoritative enough that Jane sits. It’s the police training, maybe. Or just - she sounds worried. Or something. Something like worried, but not. Something sort of firm and sort of kind and Jane honestly isn’t quite sure what to make of all of it, so she - sits. And waits, fingers tangled in her lap, feeling sort of fruitless. The kettle boils and the sea throws itself against the shore in a reassuring rustle and the sun treacles in gauzy through her curtains.

It’s not lonely in the slightest, and she’s not quite sure what to make of that, either. She’s always been alone, at the top of the hill. No one has ever puttered about in her kitchen before. No one has ever made her tea in her own house before. No one has ever -

Well, no one has ever really cared enough, before.

She looks down at her fingers and waits. There’s a crack in the grain of the coffee table, but she won’t look at it, can’t look at it. She listens for the reassuring clink of mugs and the sound of the fridge being opened, and Yaz reappears with two cups of tea in hand.

She hands one to Jane, but doesn’t sit.

“Jane,” she says, something funny in her voice, and Jane can’t put her finger on exactly what it is, except for that she’d like for it to stop. “There’s, um. It’s just all you’ve got in your cupboards is a box of stale biscuits.”

Jane sips at her tea too quickly, burns her tongue. Shame reddens her cheeks.

“Haven’t been to the shops yet this week,” she tries. Lying, but lying’s easier than breathing. Always has been. “Sorry.”

She waits for the pity but it doesn’t come. Yaz only stares at her for a moment, some kind of distress etched into her face, before she writes it over, smiles, relieved. Takes the lie with ease. For her own sake, or for Jane’s?

“Been there,” she says, taking the armchair across. “Maybe we could get a takeaway? If you don’t mind me stayin’,” she amends, a bit sheepishly. “Bit of a hike up here.”

“No, no,” Jane protests. “Of course I don’t mind.”

And for whatever reason, PC Khan - no, Yaz, _Yaz_ ‘cos they’re friends now - stays. They order takeaway and sit on the ground in her sitting room drinking tea and watch the sea glitter and wince far below them. Yaz compares the pakora unfavourably to her father’s and Jane tries in vain to explain the physics behind the waves crashing onto the shore and the time passes too quickly, but only because she’s - actually enjoying herself, she realizes. It’s not the sort of fit and start she’s used to, where she blinks and finds hours have gone by her without so much as a by-your-leave. It’s only comfortable.

It’s only comfortable.

It’s only comfortable and it doesn’t end, is the thing. Yaz leaves when the sun dips behind the sea, but she’s back the next day. And the next. They wander into town sometimes, to the chip shop, down the prom. Jane likes to wade into the sea, on occasion, her bare feet on smooth pebbles while Yaz watches from afar, nose wrinkled. She doesn’t like the sea like Jane does, doesn’t trust it. A bit afraid of it, Jane thinks privately, but maybe that’s only natural.

Evening in town always smells like salt air and chips and the lingering heat off the pavement. Briny and hot and sweet, until the wind off the sea blows it all away. It’s always the same, every night. Melted ice cream sticky down her hand, the sea cool on her feet. An expanse of dark, endless sky, and the moon.

Still far too empty, if she thinks about it too much. But it’s much easier not to think about it, when she’s not alone, and for the first time in her life that she can remember clearly, she’s very often not.

\---

The dreams don’t stop, though. At night, something that feels like the universe slips through the crack in her wall and sings to her, whispers to her, terror and beauty and endless light and the great, sucking dark.

A name, she thinks once, waking in the middle of the night. Stars that aren’t there still pepper the insides of her eyelids.

She’s hearing someone’s name.

\---

Yaz runs a finger along the books that are placed carefully on the mantle. Pauses, at the reading glasses placed precariously on top. The evening sun is trickling in through Jane’s curtains, reflecting tinnily off the takeaway cartons left on the floor.

“My mother’s,” Jane explains, gathering up the rubbish. “I think.”

“They’re lovely,” Yaz says, and her eyes wander to the photo beside them. “Is that her? In the picture?”

The woman in the photo is tall and lovely, smiling like the whole world is at her fingertips. The man beside her looks unassuming in her shadow, but his eyes are kind and his own smile is wide, like he can’t believe his luck.

“Yeah,” she says. “I never knew her. Don’t look much like her, either,” she trails off, tugging at her own hair absently. “Shame. I think I’d like to be ginger.”

Yaz’s nose wrinkles contemplatively. “I like your hair,” she decides. Her gaze returns to the picture. “You really never knew them?”

“Well,” Jane says, fidgeting with the cartons in her hands. “I mean, I must have done, but I don’t remember. There was an accident.” The back of her neck prickles. She doesn’t - she doesn’t talk about this. Ever. Not even with Dr. Jones, no matter how much she gently pries. “Do you want to see?”

The words are out her mouth before she can think better of it.

Yaz turns from the photo. _See what?_ she doesn’t ask.

“Okay,” she says, cautiously. Curiously, and that’s what Jane likes about her. She wants to know everything, see everything, touch everything. No one else in this town is like that. They take their summer days and their salt-soaked air and their motionless lives and - _take them_.

Jane swallows and holds out her free hand and Yaz takes that.

The garage is dark and musty and she hasn’t gone inside it for - well. Long enough. Even the light switch is coated in dust, and it’s a far cry from the cosiness of her workshop. Everything in here is long abandoned.

Abandoned, but not forgotten.

She sweeps through the dust and the old, left-behind tools to pull the moth-bitten sheet away, and the car looks exactly the same as it always does. The yellow paint is duller after all these years, chipped away at the front, where she’s never quite been able to repair the dents.

“It crashed and now it won’t start,” she tells Yaz quietly. “I’ve been trying to repair it for ages, but I can never get it to start. I’ve just about given up.”

Yaz stares at it for a minute, and Jane can’t get a read on her face. They stand in the dust and the silence, until Jane realizes with a guilty start that she never bothered to let go of Yaz’s hand. But she doesn’t pull away.

“Don’t give up on it,” Yaz says, finally, squeezing. “I don’t know a thing about cars, but maybe I could learn, watchin’ you. When you’re done, we could drive it into the hills.”

There are hills, behind the town. Twisting roads that lead into forest and presumably more towns, at some point. There is much more to the world than the sea, she supposes, though it’s very easy to forget.

She feels an easy grin slide across her face, imagining it. Hills and forests and ruined castles and other sleepy towns and all sorts of adventures, just waiting.

“We could,” she says, still grinning. “We definitely could.”

\---

“Are you happy, Jane?” Dr. Jones asks, notebook balanced precariously on her lap.

Jane plucks at the fabric of her jumper, her mother’s reading glasses sliding slowly down her nose. There’s a dark smear of grease stark against her knuckles. The car’s engines are a blueprint behind her eyes.

“‘Course I am,” she says, faintly. She’s so terribly, terribly close to fixing it. So terribly, terribly close to - what? Leaving?

 _Escaping_ , something whispers. She’d never imagined it was even possible, before.

She tears her gaze from the window and the sun glinting off the waves. Catches Dr. Jones’ eyes with her own, and they’re dark and very kind and very serious.

“Thank you,” she says, something in her gut insisting that this might be her last moment to say so. “I’m so sorry.”

Dr. Jones frowns. “For what, Jane?”

Jane smiles, wistful. “Do you know what?” She pushes the glasses up her nose. “I have no idea.”

\---

She takes the day off work, because this is special, this is important, this is escape. And the sky is blue and the sun is bright and the sea is behind them, barely a memory. The forest looms ahead of them, and Yaz leans her elbows on the dashboard, eyes sparkling in the light. Jane has never seen her free of her police uniform, even in their after hours, and her hair shines darkly in the sun, loose around her shoulders.

“You’ve got to come for the test drive,” Jane had said, hair sticky with sweat, rolling herself out from under the car’s body. “I never would have gotten it working if it weren’t for you.”

“All I’ve done is watch you work,” Yaz had replied, grinning. “And handed over the occasional biscuit.”

“ _Essential_ ,” she’d protested. “Absolutely essential. Who’s to say it will even work if you’re not there?”

The grin had stayed. “Well, in that case.”

They pack a bag with water and biscuits and small cucumber sandwiches, rain jackets and hats and walking shoes and -

\- and the engine stalls when they hit the edge of the town. The whole car comes to a rolling, grinding halt, and Jane smells hot pavement and leaking oil and the grind of gears is loud in her ears and her mouth is dry and -

\- the sea roars behind them, beckoning.

\---

“No one got hurt,” Yaz offers up, later. Their picnic is spread out in front of them, laid out on the beach, sprawled pathetically amongst the rocks. A bonfire crackles a few metres to their left, and the scent of stale beer and sweat occasionally wafts their way. Yaz turns her head, when the crash of glass and the voices in the crowd get too loud to be reasonable, fingers twitching, but she’s not on duty. “You can fix it up again. Can’t you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Jane says dully, feeling the phantom heat of a wrench in her hand. She’d spent hours, cramped under the car, pavement hot in her nose. Trying to fix what wasn’t broken. “There’s nothing - there’s nothing wrong with it.” She turns to Yaz, her face gleaming in the distant firelight, the shine of the moon up above them. “Sorry. I thought - ”

“Don’t be sorry,” Yaz says. Her fingers brush over Jane’s, just quickly. “No one got hurt. That’s all that matters. We can try again, yeah?”

Jane rests her chin on her knees and stares out at the sea.

“Maybe we’re not meant to leave,” she mutters.

“Maybe not,” Yaz agrees. “It’s not so bad here, though. Is it? I used to think it were proper boring, actually, but - ”

“But?”

They’re not looking at each other.

“Well, I met you,” Yaz says, after a moment, quickly. “You’re brilliant. You’re - you’re the best person I’ve ever met.”

Jane’s mouth is terribly dry.

“You don’t mean that,” she says.

“I do.” Yaz swallows. “You don’t - just ‘cos people don’t understand you, it don’t mean what they say is right. They’re just small, is all. If they really knew you - ”

She trails off.

“You’re just different,” she says. “I don’t know why, or what it is, exactly, but you make everything seem so much bigger than it is. I wasn’t - I don’t remember what it felt like, before I met you. I’m not sure it felt like anything.”

“It must have felt like something,” Jane says.

Yaz shakes her head. “I was just empty, before.” She breathes in, hesitant. Close enough that Jane could count every eyelash, if she wanted to. “Maybe the whole world was empty.”

Jane thinks of the car, of the engine as it stalled. Of all the cracks in everything she touches. Of her parents, out of reach, of all the people that she knows, just as cracked, just as broken. Dr. Jones and Ms. Temple and Jack and Ryan and Graham and Bill from the chip shop and Ms. Jovanka down the road who always wants to leave and Sarah Jane in her overalls and garden rake and the pub waitress with the name she can never remember and the blonde on the beach she always catches out of the corner of her eye -

Known and unknown and wronged and righted and cracked and broken at her touch.

She pulls away. Her fingers dig into sand and jagged rock. Above her, the empty sky taunts and taunts.

“Is the world wrong, then?” And there’s an unpleasant pressure behind her eyes, tears that threaten. “Or is it just me?”

“I don’t - ” Yaz shifts, like she can’t decide whether to move closer or not, to fill the sudden space between them. “I don’t know. But I want to help, I - I don’t think it’s you, Jane. But what could it be, though? Isn’t the world just the world?”

“Shouldn’t there be stars?” she says, helplessly. “Shouldn’t summer have an end?” She grinds her palms into her eyes. “Shouldn’t we be able to leave? I can’t remember anything, I - ”

“But there was an accident,” Yaz says softly. “That’s why you can’t remember, that’s why - ” She pauses, and Jane can almost hear the way her lips close around words less forgiving. “Maybe that’s why things don’t always feel like they make sense. It’s not you, Jane, it’s not your fault, it’s just - ”

“What about you?” she demands.

Yaz blinks, taken aback, and her eyes shine wetly in the light off the moon. “What about me?”

“How did you get here?” Jane takes a careful breath. “Why are you here, where are your parents?”

She blinks again. “I don’t - ”

“You’re from Sheffield,” Jane says. “You told me. How’d you come to be here?”

“Why does it matter?” Yaz shoots back, suddenly, uncharacteristically, terse. “I don’t know, I just - I just took a job here.”

“And where is here?” Jane presses. “What’s the name of this town?”

Yaz’s mouth opens, and stays that way. “It’s Welsh,” she stammers out, “no one can pronounce it, it’s - ”

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t - ”

Yaz shudders to a stop.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t - ”

“Why can’t we leave?” Jane whispers. “It’s not just me, is it. You’re trapped here too.”

Yaz takes in a careful breath. “I’m not trapped here. Neither are you, you’re just - ”

She follows Jane’s gaze up to the line of the starless sky. Uncertain.

“Let me take you home,” she says, standing. Offering Jane her hand. “We can try again tomorrow.”

The bonfire crackles behind them as they leave, their scattered picnic in tow. Yaz takes her home, and they walk in uncharacteristic silence. The black sky above them taunts, and the sea is loud in her ears. Yaz leaves her with a squeeze of her hand and she should go inside, go to sleep, but her head feels full of awful static, insects buzzing, and she plants herself on her garden rock instead. Hand cradled gingerly in her lap. Head tilted up at the moon.

“It’s a lovely night,” a voice calls from over her garden fence.

Jane frowns.

“Of course, they’re all lovely nights, aren’t they,” the voice continues, and a small blonde makes her way poised over the garden gate and unlatches it from inside. A golden retriever trots after her good-naturedly as it swings in the salt breeze. “That’s rather the point.”

“Sorry,” Jane says from her rock, unalarmed, though she supposes she probably should be. She doesn’t have any neighbours, at the top of her cliff. And it doesn’t make for especially safe walking, especially at night. “Do I know you?”

The golden retriever snuffles her way, tongue lolling.

“Who’s a good dog,” she whispers, scratching under his chin.

“Affirmative,” the golden retriever says, but the woman doesn’t seem to find this odd and so maybe it isn’t.

“Oh, I expect so,” the blonde says, and her face is thin and pale and pointed. “Somewhere in there, anyway. You could call me Fred, if you like.”

“What if I don’t like?”

“Then you could still call me Fred. I don’t much care if you like it.”

Jane feels her nose wrinkle. “I’m sorry, I - ”

“I’m only visiting.” Fred brushes dust and the odd bramble off her skirt, from her attempt at clambering over Jane’s fence. “I came to warn you. I can’t stay long, I’m afraid. I’d have come sooner, but you were very difficult to find.”

“Sorry,” Jane breathes again, as Fred moves closer. The dog is warm and soft under her hand. She scratches his ears again, absently. “Who are you, exactly?”

“I’m just a ghost,” Fred says softly. “Just a bit of aggregated data, really. It’s terribly limiting.” And there’s a breath of haughtiness to her, something irritated and posh that makes Jane want to laugh, because it’s - familiar. “That’s all this is, really. A big computer, filled with ghosts, I believe you put it.”

“Ghosts,” Jane breathes. Certainty fills her, dread like winter air. “Am I dead?”

“Not yet.” Fred gazes down at her, impassable. “But it’s only a matter of time. You must leave, Jane.”

“I can’t.” Jane’s head twists towards the garage, brow crinkling. “The - I can’t fix the car. I’ve tried.”

Fred only looks at her.

“There’s no road out of here,” is all she says. “It’s not a town, it’s a trap.”

“A trap?” The sea rushes in her ears. “Rule number one,” she whispers, and the words aren’t hers but they _are_. “A trap means you’re the only one in the room who is irreplaceable. So show them who’s boss.” She takes in a breath. “Die faster.”

The sea rushes in her ears.

“You built a way out, Jane,” Fred says softly, not denying. “Look at the coast.”

“The coast?” Jane goes to stand, but Fred’s already moving, the golden retriever at her heels, tongue lolling pleasantly. “Wait,” she pleads. “Where are you going?”

“Philosophically, or geographically?”

“Philosophically,” Jane decides.

Fred smiles like it hurts.

“I’m going to lunch,” she says, and bends down to plant a kiss on Jane’s forehead. Her lips are cool and dry and there’s something static to her touch, a bent of something not quite there. She straightens. “Goodbye, Jane. Good luck.”

The dog glances back at her mournfully as they leave. Fred’s red shoes click against the uneven garden path and the gate swings with a wailing creak as they depart. For a moment, Jane only sits, stomach churning. Something trying hard to be half a memory struggles at the back of her head, but it’s stuck there, spinning.

“Ghosts,” she mutters, more to herself, and when she stands and moves to her fence the coast stretches in front of her, cragged and grey and sharp in the moonlight. “I think I might be in hell. Why is hell a Welsh resort town full of English people?” She pauses. Considers. “Hell for the _Welsh_ , maybe.”

The sea gleams in the moonlight, silver and cold. The coast stretches, cragged, jagged, winding around like a -

She swallows dryly. _Ah_ , she thinks, not especially enjoying it.

Like a crack in the earth.

\---

When Yaz arrives the next morning, Jane hasn’t moved from the rock.

“You weren’t at work again,” Yaz says, passing her a dripping cone, the Flake bar tilted, slowly sliding towards the ground in the mid-morning heat. Unseasonably hot, Jane thinks, feeling the ice cream run sticky down her fingers, watching it pool on the ground. It only rains when she thinks it ought to, and that ought to have been the first clue, really.

“Do you believe in stars, Yaz?” she asks.

She doesn’t have to look to know Yaz’s eyebrows have pulled together skeptically.

“Do you?” she asks. “Jane, are you alright?”

“Your sister, when was she born?”

“I don’t - ”

“What’s your favourite episode of East Enders? Favourite colour?”

“I don’t,” Yaz says, and when Jane turns, her own ice cream cone is dripping down her fingers. Mint choc green, stark against her skin. Stark against the stone on the ground, cracked. “I don’t know, I don’t remember. Why does it matter?”

She’s dressed like police, like she always is, vest glinting in the sun.

“You don’t know,” Jane says. “Because I don’t know. You’re part of the trap,” she whispers. “Only you’re not even a ghost, you’re just data. Numbers, crunched into a person.”

“Very funny,” Yaz says. “Jane, are we going or not?”

“There’s no going.” Jane stands, knees shaking. “Not out that way, anyway. I think you know that.”

“Now you’re just bein’ weird on purpose.”

“No,” Jane says. “I’m just bein’ honest. You’re part of all of this, you’re programmed to be part of it.”

“Jane, you’re scaring me, a bit,” Yaz says, ice cream still dripping down her fingers. “Do you want to come inside?” She pauses. “Have you been out here all night? Jane - ”

“My name isn’t Jane,” Jane says.

Yaz looks at her, affronted. “Of course it is.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, if you’re not Jane then who are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, there you have it,” Yaz says, shifting uncertainly. Unease settling into her face as irritation. “How can you be anyone else?”

“I don’t know, I don’t _remember,_ ” she snaps. “But I know I don’t belong here.”

“Well, neither do I!” Yaz snaps back. “I wasn’t anything, until you started talking to me. Nothing here moved, until you started talking to me, but it moves now, I can _feel_ it, so don’t talk like I’m some piece of the landscape!”

“But you are,” Jane breathes, “a piece of the landscape. I’m so sorry, but you are. You’re made out of memories.”

Yaz shakes her head. “You are mad,” she says. “Everyone else was right.”

“No, they weren’t.” Jane straightens. “There’s nothing wrong with me. This isn’t _real_.” She swallows. “And neither are you.”

“I’m as real as you are,” Yaz insists, but her knuckles are white against the ice cream cone. She drops it abruptly, swipes her hands on her trousers. “Come inside,” she begs. “Let’s - let’s fix the car, let’s try again.”

Jane only looks at her.

“You’re only numbers,” she says. “You’re meant to keep me here, you’re designed to keep me here, you’re made out of my own memories of you. But you’re not real.”

“But I - ”

Yaz scowls at her and grabs her hand.

“This is real,” she says sharply. “I - I’ve got feelings, and they’re just as real as you.” She swallows. “What happened?” she begs. “Weren’t it all fine? Why all this now, what’s - ”

“Prove it,” Jane snaps. “If you - if you really care about me, if you’re more than just a slice of data, then prove it. Help me leave.”

“You just said we couldn’t.”

“Not in a car.”

A drop of rain hits her face, cool. Because it ought to.

Jane looks out at the coast, hand still grasped in Yaz’s own.

“You can’t swim out there,” Yaz protests, following her gaze. “The tide’s too strong. It’s dangerous.”

“It’s the only way out.”

“You’re mad,” Yaz says. “You’re actually mad.”

Jane looks back at her, jaw set. “Prove it.”

The walk hand in hand down the narrow path to Jane’s house, rain tumbling down until they’re cold and damp. Yaz’s hand is clammy in her own, the yellow of her vest shining slickly. Thunder cracks overhead, lightning sparking over the sea.

Not a warning. A way out.

“What happens if you drown?” Yaz demands as they stumble towards the beach, make their way down the familiar wooden steps. “What if you’re wrong?”

“Sounds like something a trap would say,” Jane snaps back, hair plastered to her forehead.

“What’s on the other side, then?” she asks, and when Jane meets her gaze her eyes are dark and shiny in the gloom. “What’s waitin’?”

“No idea,” Jane says, abandoning her shoes with the rocks. Leaving them to the seaweed. “But it’s got to be more than this, doesn’t it?”

Yaz frowns, worried.

“Come on, Yaz,” Jane breathes, taking her other hand. “Prove it. Come with me.”

“I can’t,” Yaz protests.

“What’s here for you?” Jane demands. “What’s here for me? It’s a purgatory, Yaz. It’s summer in a bottle, but summer always has to end.”

She pulls them closer to the water, into the waves. Salt and brine fill her nose, and it’s an old, old, smell.

“Come with me,” she says, and the tide pulls and tugs at her ankles.

“Do you believe in stars, Jane?”

“I do.” Jane squeezes her hands. “More than anything.”

“Then I think you might be right,” Yaz whispers, and her eyes are blank, fixed in front of her. Her voice cracks. “I think I might not be real.”

Jane follows her gaze, twists behind her to watch the colourful houses on the prom tilt and warp. Melt, like ice cream. The sand on the beach starts to run, and she can hear it shift and silt its way towards them. The hills behind the town fold like stacks of cards.

The smell of chips is harsh up her nose, vinegar and hot pavement and brine and stale pints and salt air.

Yaz’s hands in her own start to flicker like a bad hologram.

“You don’t believe in it,” she says, tinnily. Her voice sounds very far away. “You don’t believe in it anymore.” Her face breaks out into a smile, disintegrating slowly. “That’s good, though. Isn’t it?”

“No,” Jane says, heart - only one, and that’s wrong, isn’t it, _that’s wrong_ \- pounding sharply in her throat. “No, Yaz - ”

“I’m out there, somewhere,” Yaz says, flickering like a candle. Smiling, still.  “Aren’t I? I was in here, but I’m out there, still. You just have to find me.” Her voice breaks and snaps and shudders. “Jane. You remembered me. Will you find me - ?”

Gone, like breath on glass and Jane’s hands are empty. Thunder crashes overhead, and it’s an empty sound, too. Rain pelts her face, cool, as the world melts around her.

No one else is there to find it odd, and so maybe it isn’t.

Jane takes a shuddering breath and walks into the sea.

 

She doesn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, it's ya girl, queen of consistent update schedules, checking in
> 
> (dsajhfsdaf i'm joking obvs SORRY MY BRAIN DOESN'T WORK IN SUMMER i don't make the rules)
> 
> anyway, this was a weird one but I hope you enjoyed and I'd love to know what you thought! Also, in other exciting summer news and to make up for my sad lack of promo-ing WE JUST RELEASED A ZINE and if you want more weird shit from yours truly and more wonderful shit from a bunch of wonderful talented people, then you should absolutely get your marvellous hands on it - deets @thirteenfanzine on Tumblr
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
